Motherhood Archives - Page 16 of 28 -

Sleep and the Definition of Enough

February 12, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Three years, eight months. That’s how old my son is. To the day, actually. That’s also how long we’ve been dealing with a kid who just will not sleep.

I haven’t posted too much about sleep issues here, but if you go back through my Facebook timeline to 2008/09 you’ll find that the vast majority of my status updates are about our sleep battles.

I’m sure there are kids who are worse. And I know there are parents who deal with much harder things. But oh my god the sleep. It’s tiring. (Pun intended.)

We have had very short – VERY short – stretches where he’ll sleep through the night a few nights in a row. I can’t remember what the record was, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t take two hands to count out the streak. We had some rough nights when we first moved into this house, which we expected, but we’ve now been here, and pretty settled, for 2 1/2 months. Guess how many times he’s slept through the night since we’ve been here. Go on, guess.

ONE.

That’s not counting the nights he slept with us or the ones where one of us, or my mom, slept with him. My husband and I still basically alternate nights so only one of us has to get up on any given night. Which works all right, except for those nights when he gets up 4,326 times.

Okay, to be fair, he’s not that bad.

I’d say he’s up an average of twice a night. Many nights only once, but quite often three or four times. The good thing is that it’s much, much easier to get him back to sleep now. Lately he will just quietly walk into our room and stand next to the bed. That’s generally enough for one of us to wake up, and when we do he says he wants a cuddle. So one of us will go back with him and give him a cuddle because (a) cuddles are nice, even (usually) at 3 a.m. and (b) we’re just too tired to be tough and make him go back to bed on his own.

We’re doing this to ourselves, aren’t we? We know we are, and I think we’ve essentially decided we don’t care. I remember when Connor was really young a fellow new mom observed that all those things we do in the moment to deal with a baby when we’re really tired totally screw us over, but we don’t care. It’s like we’re choosing the way present “me” wants to do things and saying, “Screw you, future me. I’m tired.”

And then you become future me and you wish formerly present me wasn’t such a bitch.

But, alas, here I am nearly four years later still making choices that screw over future me. And not only does future me have to deal with the waking up and the interrupted sleep and the way-too-early mornings, but she has to do it while she’s tired. And there’s no version of me who does well when she’s tired.

I’ve long stopped thinking he’ll finally just sleep already. I’m sure he won’t, ever. I’m sure somewhere out there is a very small girl who may one day become his wife and who will be mad at me for screwing her over too. And all I will be able to say is, “I used to be a much nicer person and a much better mother but your dear husband never slept enough and as a result I’m kind of a bitch.”

So to her, and to all the future versions of me, I say: “Yeah, sorry about that.”

Oh look, he did sleep once. We even got it on camera.

Filed Under: Be enough me, Hard things, Motherhood · Tagged With: Be enough me, sleep

A Serving of Working Mom Guilt, Please

January 23, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

I’m struggling tonight.

I’ve started a new job, which I love, but I’m playing the Working Mom Guilt Game, which I hate. And tonight I lost.

Last night, after a fun and busy weekend, I stood at the kitchen counter to make my lunch for today. Connor came over and asked me what I was doing. “Making my lunch,” I said. “Why?” he asked. “Because I have to go to work tomorrow.”

And then came the face.

“I thought you didn’t have to go to work every day.”

I hate that face.

We’ve had this conversation several times in the last couple of weeks. He wants me to play with him in the morning or sit with him while he eats his breakfast. I want to do that too. I love mornings with him. It’s quiet, I’m not thinking about all the things I have to get done, and it’s just me and him. But weekday mornings are too short, and more often than not lately he isn’t even up when I leave for work, which steals at least half an hour I’d otherwise get to spend with him. When he is up I inevitably get, “Do you have to go to work today? [sad face]” So as we approach weekends I get to do the “Guess what?!” thing and tell him I don’t have to work. We talk about the things we’re going to do and he gets that excited, I-get-my-mama face.

I love that face.

What I don’t love is the other end of the day when I come home after a day—preceded too often by too little sleep—from a new job that makes my brain tired. When I have spent all day in an office full of people, talking and laughing and working and learning, and my inner introvert just wants to sit in my quiet bedroom by myself for a while.

3-year-olds don’t let you sit in your bedroom by yourself for any length of time. At least mine doesn’t.

So I come home after working to a little guy who wants his mom to play with him, which, as the last thing I feel like doing, induces massive guilt.

Working Mom Guilt.

I’m not here when I want to be and when I am here I spend too much time wanting something else. It sucks.

This is what I missed while I was at work today.

This is especially tough right now because I’m working a slightly longer day than I used to and I work farther away, both of which slice into my momming time. And he’s going to bed later, which slices into my me time.

Nobody’s winning here, people. (And don’t even get me started on all the blog reading and commenting I’m not doing.)

Maybe I’ll get used to it. Maybe we all will. Maybe we won’t. In any case, tonight my working mom guilt came with a side order of the Monday tireds and some irrational, the-toddler-is-chewing-too-loud annoyance and I had to leave the room to take a deep breath.

My mama mug spilleth over, and I don’t know what to do about it.

Filed Under: Conversations with Connor, Hard things, Motherhood · Tagged With: admissions, expectations, family, rants, telling the truth

Tick-Tock Goes the Clock

January 16, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Image credit: Caucas on Flickr

I lie beside him as the early afternoon sun streams through the blinds. As I wait for him to fall asleep every wiggle-squirm feels like a tick-tock of the clock.

Will he sleep? I want him to nap so we can go on our planned adventure later this afternoon. I need him to nap so I can get a few things done.

The thought crosses my mind—as it has done so many times before—that it would be so nice if he were one of those kids who will fall asleep without my staying with him until he’s out.

But he’s not one of those kids.

He wiggle-squirms again and the clock tick-tocks.

I hear the dishwasher running downstairs and I think of my semi-clean kitchen. I make a mental list of what I want to try to accomplish while he’s asleep so another weekend doesn’t go by without getting anything done, leaving chaos to reign.

Tick-tock goes the clock.

The wiggle-squirms start to slow, and I hear the familiar deep breathing that’s a sign of coming sleep. Everything in me starts to slow, too, and the sound of the dishwasher fades into an awareness of quiet.

Just when I think he’s asleep, he takes my arm and pulls it around him, then pulls it around some more so he’s wrapped tightly. This is going to be a hard one to get out of without waking him, I think.

In the quiet room, awash in bright sunlight, I feel his warmth. I sense his breathing. I feel his quiet.

The tick-tock of the clock comes back, but this time it’s a different awareness. Not of things to do and bathrooms to clean but of passing days, a growing boy and the fleeting nature of this time when he’ll let me lie with my arms around him while he sleeps.

So I lie there a little longer, cherishing his small-boy softness and his warmth and his peacefulness.

I want to remember this.

So I write it down.

Filed Under: Happy things, Motherhood · Tagged With: family, favourite activities, love, moments

The Gift of the Present

January 7, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

I spent some time reading blogs this afternoon. After a full Saturday, and a full work week, it was nice to sit down and live in others’ lives for a while.

There are a lot of posts right now about choosing one word. It’s an idea that seems to have taken off and there are more than I would have expected. And there were a lot of similarities in the words chosen. “Calm.” “Serenity.” “Peace.” Being “present.” Even if these words were chosen because of their absence in people’s lives, it felt calming to read them.

One other post jumped out at me. (And now I can’t find it to link to. Sigh. Update: Found it! Thanks Angela.) A mom, of course, and a struggle at bedtime. A head, belonging to a child who’s supposed to be in bed, peeks around the door where mom’s working. A request for a cuddle. Instead of responding with exasperation or an automatic “get in bed!” this mother pauses. She sees the moment for what it is—one of many, yet fleeting—and says yes.

She walks away from her computer and wraps her arms around her child.

I don’t do that enough, especially after bedtime. But tonight, after I was finished my dinner, I had the same request. A small boy holding a bowl of orange ice cream.

“Mama, can I sit with you?”

This isn’t usually my favourite request. I don’t really like him sitting on my lap right after I’ve eaten, and at that point I was browsing through blogs again. But I paused, remembered those words and that post, and said yes.

Tonight I, too, was present. I lived in that moment. And in doing so I found a calming cuddle, serenity in the warmth of a small boy’s back, and the peace that comes from finding your happy place in the squish of a toddler tummy.

Filed Under: Conversations with Connor, Happy things, Motherhood · Tagged With: favourite activities, love, moments

Becoming Real

January 2, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen.

A few years ago I was really splendid. I was fat and bunchy too, and my hair shone. But then something changed.

For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him…Between them all the poor little Rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse.

When your shine disappears and your sateen starts to wear, it’s easy to feel insignificant. All the things I had been on the outside seemed to be gone, and all that was left was the threadbare version of me.

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

All mothers experience this to some degree, I think. The initial boast-and-swagger clouds what is real and we stumble. We look in the mirror one day and realize the splendid version of ourselves is gone. For some, the nursery magic reveals that the mother version of ourselves in its place is actually the Real version but, for others, we think think we’ve lost ourselves and are simply gone.

I thought I wasn’t Real because I wasn’t made that way. I thought I wasn’t made to be a mother and in becoming one had lost who I truly am.

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

But I didn’t have the wisdom of the Skin Horse. I wasn’t old and wise and experienced and I couldn’t see that I could, in fact, become Real.

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

Becoming Real did hurt. Sometimes a little bit and sometimes a lot. Most of the time I did mind, but I wasn’t Real yet.

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Over the last 3 1/2 years I have become Real, bit by bit.

I didn’t actually know it though. I thought I was unlike other mothers, the same way the Velveteen Rabbit was afraid of what the rabbits in the forest would think of him, not realizing he was in fact Real, and had hind legs just like they did.

There are still people who don’t understand, I think. Those who don’t understand why I felt as though I weren’t good enough, and those who don’t understand why I share all this here.

But the nursery magic Fairy in The Velveteen Rabbit tells the Rabbit what it is to be Real, and the reason he is Real is the same reason I am.